Social Media

Who's Nearby? This App Lets You Know

You never know when you pass a friend of a friend on the street. That might not bother you, but it drives Paul Davison crazy.

"The way we find people has been terribly inefficient," he says. "We don’t realize how horrible it is because it’s always been that way."

Davison created an iOS app called Highlight he hopes will add a layer of awareness to the daily act of passing people. After users connect their Facebook profiles, it will push their basic information to other people who use the app. Users can choose to make their information accessible to either everyone or friends of friends. Either way, the app only makes the connection if the two parties have something in common.

“It’s not about meeting people," Davison says. "It’s really about having something that surfaces information from people around you as you go.”

You aren't alone if the idea — no matter its practical applications — strikes you as a bit creepy. You also aren't alone if you think it's hands-down awesome. Robert Scoble believes Highlight "will be the hottest thing at SXSW next year."

Davison doesn't see it as a much different attitude on sharing interests with the world than most of us are already engaged in — just a more efficient one.

"We wear T-shirts from our favorite bands and sweaters from our college," he says. "It's like a version of Facebook where the whole profile is a single photo and that's all you get. And that version really sucks."

He's not the first entrepreneur to imagine a frictionless, automatic network that overlays the physical world. An Israeli startup called magnetU has developed a tiny gadget that compares your profile, in which you’ve explained what characteristics you are looking for, with that of others. When two devices make a mutually satisfying match, they alert their owners via SMS message or mobile app, ranking the strength of the match and delivering whatever contact information the device owners have allowed in their privacy settings.

Mobile app Sonar uses public information from social networks such as Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook to show people how they're connected with others in the room. Another mobile app called Arrived automatically alerts certain friends when you arrive at certain places.

Highlight — which lives on your phone and doesn't require any action on your part once it is set up — is, however, the most frictionless manifestation of the idea yet. While it only has about 100 alpha users as it opens to the public on Tuesday, one can imagine how it could change the way we connect if it were to become as popular as Facebook. The question is whether people are willing to let it do so.

"I think everyone would be willing to share some subset of information with some subset of people," Davison says.

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